180 



DISCOVERY 



since they spring from a somewhat deep level of the 

 unconscious mind, they do not readily come to expres- 

 sion. Such a theme is found in the story of the hero, 

 who is brought up in humble surroundings by foster- 

 parents, coming into his rightful inheritance after he 

 is grown up (i.e. Romulus, Siegfried, etc.), and it cor- 

 responds to a fantasy frequently found in children, in 

 which the real mother and father are pictured as foster- 

 parents, while imaginary ones, usually far more exalted 

 and indulgent, are imagined to take their place. This 

 fantasy probably arises out of the idealisation of the 

 parents and the flight into day-dream from disillusion- 

 ment when the child comes to see his parents as ordinary 

 human beings after all. 



This day-dream finds its counterpart in many film 

 dramas where the hero turns out to be the heir to titles 

 and fortune, wrongfully or ignorantly kept out of his 

 heritage, and the spectator, living into the part of the 

 hero, finds along the lines of his old day-dreams some 

 compensation for, even in a measure, a fantastic ex- 

 planation of, his own exclusion from the riches and 

 power that people, no better than himself, possess. 



A theme of similar, and perhaps identical origin, is 

 that of the " hero in disguise," and Haroun al Raschid, 

 the mighty Caliph wandering incognito in the streets 

 of Baghdad, is the legendaiy figure nearest the modern 

 type who appears in popular drama as a man regarded 

 by his fellows as an ordinary or even negligible mortal, 

 but who possesses some semi-magical power, great 

 wealth or influence which he chooses to wield anony- 

 mously and in secret until the last act. Such a fantasy, 

 though doubtless it has a deeper origin, may serve as 

 a fantastic explanation of the discrepancy between a 

 man's own opinion of himself and that held by others ; 

 such a fantasy when combined with great egoism may 

 exert a sinister influence on the character and may 

 possibly play a part in the psychology of the poisoner 

 who is sometimes discovered to have added to his list 

 of victims with an apparently wanton inadequacy 

 of motive. 



It is in this role of the hero in disguise that George 

 Borrow frequently drew himself in " Lavengro " and 

 " The Romany Rye," books that were at first projected 

 as autobiography but to which he gave at one time the 

 significant sub-title of " a dream," a description that 

 may perhaps explain some of their wide, but not 

 obviously explicable, popularity. Borrow also illus- 

 trates another line of escape from reality, into the past 

 and the exotic, a mode of reaction from the environ- 

 ment to which archaeology and history are probably 

 largely indebted. 



But there was one way of escape of which Borrow, 

 with all his mal-adjustment to life, could not or did not 

 avail himself, and that was the way of humour, the 

 attitude that throws down a kind of challenge to reality 



by denying, or rather levelling down, its values. 

 Perhaps the most thorough-going humorist in this 

 way was that fisherman in Stevenson's fable ("The 

 Poor Thing"), " bitter poor and bitter ugly," with his 

 formula " that in my thought one thing is as good as 

 another," on the strength of which he tried to obtain 

 the King's daughter in exchange for an old horse-shoe 

 that he had picked up in the road. The protective 

 value of humour was very evident during the late war, 

 and there was a fine courage in the attempt by comba- 

 tants exposed to the worst horrors to treat them as a 

 joke, and the attempt was often surprisingly successful. 

 This levelling down of values seemed sometimes even 

 to result in a truer perspective, for the " Hun " and 

 " Boche " of the newspapers and the home front 

 became simple " Fritz " and " Jerry " in the closer 

 acquaintanceship of the front line, since, as one of their 

 own poets has said : 



" Dort wo der Tod am meisten droht, 

 Dort ist nicht Hohu und ist nicht Hass. " ' 



(There where the threat of Death is greatest, 

 There is no room for hate or scorn.) 



This tendency of humour to belittle the values of 

 reality contains, as do all modes of escape, a slightly 

 retrograde trend, for if sufficiently acutely developed 

 it becomes not easily compatible with any very great 

 enthusiasm or even activity, and it is perhaps signi- 

 ficant that it does not find its most obvious expression 

 in those younger nations who are at closest grip with 

 reality. This tendency of humour leads up to a com- 

 plete denial of the intrinsic value of reality either by 

 a philosophy or by an attitude of detachment from the 

 " insubstantial pageant " of the world. 



But the flight from reality sometimes carries farther, 

 making a goal of Nirvana, whether imagined as anni- 

 hilation or as a compromise in " stirless rest." This 

 ideal, at such cross-purpose with life, has been the 

 theme of much beautiful poetry, usually addressed to 

 death, though perhaps more nearly expressed by Walter 

 de la Mare when he says : 



Somewhere there Nothing is ; and there lost Man 

 Shall win what changeless vague of peace he can. ' ' > 



For, pessimistic though it may seem, it is probably 

 not identical with a wish for death, since, when we 

 come to examine it in the psychology of the individual, 

 we seem to find it expressed as an unconscious wish 

 to go back again to the beginning — 



Before the birth of consciousness 

 When all went well — 



' Anonymous. From an anthology of German war poetry 

 Der Deutsche Krieg im Deutschen Geiicht. (Verlag Morawe und 

 Scheffelt. Berlin.) 



2 " The Tryst," by de la Mare. Poems 1901-1918, vol. i. 



